Project Part I: Desk Conversion

I shall attempt to post this again, after talking with W1zzard. Thanks for the help guys.
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Hello all

After reading through a few desk build logs I decided that I wanted to share in the awesomeness and convert my current desk into something nice. This will also clear room for my legs underneath the desk by removing the case from the equation since my desk is only 32" long. I'm also no master craftsman here, this is probably the most I've ever attempted to build something other than a simple box I made once out of plywood, lol.

Now I wasn't really planning on doing a build log but it will be cool to track my own progress and probably motivate me to continue working on this project and eventually building a custom desk once I've had my test run on the one I already own. So bear with me as I collect more pictures.

My desk was just a standard cheap desk from Target (or Ikea I forget) with a keyboard drawer, nothing fancy. My idea was to remove the drawer, put a bottom underneath, cut a slot on the left side for 2 hi-speed fans and a slot on the right side for the power supply. I got a sheet of steel sheet metal from this guy for $15 to attach all the hardware to and wrapped the sheet in this reflective material I found online. I took the original top to the desk and brought it to a glass cutter and had him cut a piece of glass for the top, only $60.

Hope I didn't forget anything, and I will be posting more pictures once I get my packages in the mail hopefully by Saturday. Thanks for being interested, I plan on doing a lot more refining to this desk and eventually building one from the ground up!

Oh yesir it is indeed messy right now. I was going through withdrawls and needed to get my PC back upstairs :-D . I hope to be making everything cleaner and more seamless in the next few weeks, kinda learning to build this as I go. I need to make a few trips to home depot to get some ideas on how to clean up the top of the desk where the glass sits.

Also found out my fans were delivered today, so now I can clean up the slot on the left hand side.

If anyone has any suggestions feel free to throw them out there, never enough ideas to think about.

Alright got some cool shit in today, gonna throw up some pictures. Not sure if I'm gonna tackle installing them tonight though, probably gonna have to wait for tomorrow.

Got my 2x Delta FFB1212EH-F00 120mm Case Fan @ 4,000rpm

Some thermal stuff for down the road, motivate myself to get that custom loop installed

My favorite thing from today is the Lamptron Touch 6-channel fan controller. This seems very well build, definitely a quality product and I am excited to get this up and running with those two Delta fans.

It came packed very well too.

I was hoping my LEDs were going to be here today since I ordered them a day before all this stuff, but I guess not . Good thing I'm off from work Monday!

So I've decided to pretty much skip the desk conversion. I have begun building my own desk similar in layout to the one I was converting but it should be better. I'll post some pics later for anyone who may be following this.

Alright here are some pics on what I have been working on. I decided that the desk conversion was a good learning lesson and since its just about the same dimensions as the desk I am building I can test things on it if need be.

So here are just some pictures of the left and right sides.

This is a piece that is being glued together, I may use this as the base on which to lay the sheet metal that all the hardware will screwed into. We'll see how things come along. Either way I am going to add another piece to the back to house all the cables so that there is nothing strewn about.

The hardware laid out on the sheet metal, just trying to get an idea of what to do and how things may come along. Also I'll need to re-wrap that in the mylar I found to use for this.

So I've also decided that I want to use an acrylic on the sides for the fan & PSU. From the images on the site it will be see through enough for the LED's to come through but not be obnoxious. I made a couple of mock ups to use in the mean time. I saw that UltimateDesk had DangerDen create a couple of acrylic pieces, I was thinking of seeing if they could so the same.

Images of the acrylic I was looking at.

Some bad news of course. The Lamptron Touch fan controller seems to be defective. It won't power on any of the fans that I have tried plugging into it. It also doesn't detect anything but fan 1 it seems, only giving me a voltage reading for it. May have to RMA it, FrozenCPU.com where I bought it said they would test the replacement before they sent it out at least.

Some great news. I was just being stupid with the fan controller and didn't realize what I thought was channel 1 was actually channel 6. So anyway, the controller works beautifully, powers on both Delta's to 3,960 (they are rated @ 4,000 so perfect), as well as a couple other fans I had lying around.

Alright time for an update. I've been working on what will become the front piece of the desk that will hold the fan controller, optical drive, and SD reader. I just finished the rough cuts and made sure that everything fit and was functional. I still have to sand down the entire desk, I've been delaying the inevitable. But the next thing to be done will be finishing the back panel that will house the cords.

*Edit*

I also received a 4 slot I/O panel from DangerDen but I am not sure if I will use it, but better have it and be safe than wait for it to arrive.

I like the concept and it looks pretty good so far, but I'm not sure about the internal layout of the hardware. Particularly, it seems like airflow would be obstructed by your hard-drives. I would either lay them flat, or put them against the sides. Also, do you plan to have any fans for exhaust on the other side of the desk? I think that would work great.

Ya the layout is the biggest pain due to the size of the desk. I just took the mylar off the sheet metal and I'm gonna see what other options work. I ideally want to keep the 3 hard drives near each other but I may have to move one near the PSU.

As for the exhaust situation. I can't really put any fans on the opposite side by the PSU because its 2" away from the wall, so I'm not sure how well it would pull in air. What I was thinking of was getting a Sanyo Denki blower ( http://www.newark.com/sanyo-denki-sanace-fans/9bfb12p2h003/blower-2-3a-12v/dp/19T8929?CMP=AFC-HEARST 3,750rpm) to put by the PSU to suck in air and push it through to the opposite side towards the two Delta fans, or installing one in the back, or even on the bottom that would be kinda cool. Anyway those Deltas push air like crazy (150cfm/4krpm @ 100% each), I wanna try and make a video it's pretty awesome haha.

Thanks for the comments dude, always up for suggestions. This is the most I've ever built, so I'm trying to take my time and not ruin anything too badly

Ya the layout is the biggest pain due to the size of the desk. I just took the mylar off the sheet metal and I'm gonna see what other options work. I ideally want to keep the 3 hard drives near each other but I may have to move one near the PSU.

As for the exhaust situation. I can't really put any fans on the opposite side by the PSU because its 2" away from the wall, so I'm not sure how well it would pull in air. What I was thinking of was getting a Sanyo Denki blower ( http://www.newark.com/sanyo-denki-sanace-fans/9bfb12p2h003/blower-2-3a-12v/dp/19T8929?CMP=AFC-HEARST 3,750rpm) to put by the PSU to suck in air and push it through to the opposite side towards the two Delta fans, or installing one in the back, or even on the bottom that would be kinda cool. Anyway those Deltas push air like crazy (150cfm/4krpm @ 100% each), I wanna try and make a video it's pretty awesome haha.

Thanks for the comments dude, always up for suggestions. This is the most I've ever built, so I'm trying to take my time and not ruin anything too badly

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Ah, I totally overlooked which direction your fans were facing and thought you were using them as intake, but now I see that they're already exhaust. Hmm, maybe put a vent and an intake fan on the bottom, all the way to the right. Also, I'd probably flip the PSU and put a vent underneath that as well, even though that would make cable management a bit more difficult.

Since I have that Thermaltake SATA dock I eliminated one of the internal drives so there will only be two in the desk due to size constraints. I think this layout would work best for air flow as long as I can get creative with the cable management.

I definitely am going to get one of these so that I don't have to run another wire to the fan controller.

I bet they'll be pretty good. I just thought of another idea too; can your CPU heatsink be rotated 90 degrees? If so, then the fins would be lined up with your fans. And I still think you should put an intake where I mentioned before

I bet they'll be pretty good. I just thought of another idea too; can your CPU heatsink be rotated 90 degrees? If so, then the fins would be lined up with your fans. And I still think you should put an intake where I mentioned before

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I will check if the sink can be rotated . Ya I wanna put another 120mm intake or the blower I mentioned before, on right side somewhere to get crossflow, gonna see what works out best.

Power button/reset is going to be in the middle of the panel that has the fan controller, optical drive, sd reader. I drilled the hole for the power button (you can kind of see it in the picture below), and have a button, but I may order a different one with an orange LED. The one I have is just black.

I bought a Silverstone FP36 - USB 3.0 from copenhagen69, sending that out this week, and I have an 8 port USB hub. Just thinking of this made me realize that it may be able to hold one of my hdds and solve that dilemma.

*Edit*

I attached the back panel last night, so I laid everything out earlier to get an idea on how this will come together. I have to trim it down some. Everything is in need of a hardcore sanding too. That wood piece in the middle is not attached, I used it as a brace for all the clamps I had on and now it fits nice and snug in there on its own.

Aye so I've been at a stand still at the moment. Have some finals going on and I'm waiting for some stuff which should be arriving today. Hope to post some pictures today and get back to work on this tomorrow.